2. France’s National Electric Company has invested $400MN in Israel’s solar market (Globes, June 5).

3. The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, the largest investment fund in the world (funded by Norway’s oil explorations), has invested $686MN in the Tel Aviv stock exchange, $$552MN during the last four years (Globes, June 10).

4. Israeli R&D is present in 20.5% ($24.6BN) of all global bio-tech products ($120BN) — a symptom of the rapidly growing Israeli bio-tech sector and the flow of global giants establishing R&D centers in Israel (Globes, June 7).

5. The largest defense contractor in the USA, Lockheed-Martin, is establishing a computer center in Israel, jointly with Israel’s Binat (Globes, June 5). Israel is the world largest exporter of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) — $4.6BN during the last eight years. This export is expected to grow 5%-10% annually until 2020. Israel’s defense exports exceed $6BN annually, 10% of which consists of UAVs (Globes, May 24).

7. “Israel is helping the US meet the economic, environmental and non-military security (EG. cyber security) challenges of the future… Israeli experts and start-ups regularly partner with US firms to develop applications such as instant messaging, Internet telephony and data-mining. Intel’s executive, Greg Slater, noted that many of his company’s major innovations over the past three decades started in Israel, including Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge micro-processors, which accounted for 40% of Intel revenues in 2011… Bill Gates said that the ‘innovations going on in Israel are critical to the future of the technology business…’ Israel accounted for about 25% of US exports to the Middle East in 2011… equaling or surpassing those to oil-rich Saudi Arabia… Israeli firms have set up manufacturing plants [in the USA] that employ tens of thousands of Americans… Israel is a top innovator in the technologies of modern warfare — cyber, unmanned vehicles, robotics, missile defense — an important source of innovations for the US defense contractors and troops… Israel is also a world leader in micro-irrigation, wastewater management and reverse-osmosis desalination… Israeli [know-how] is helping the US promote nation-building at home and security and sustainability abroad…” (Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2013, Michael Eisenstadt and David Pollock, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy).